


The Nymph’s Reply

by AMarguerite



Series: Drury Lane [2]
Category: Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Alternate Universe - Theatre, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 11:57:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18141890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: Continuation of the Georgian-era celebrity AU.Elizabeth Bennet takes to the stage as Viola and takes against the sudden spate of love poems dedicated to her.





	The Nymph’s Reply

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stultiloquentia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stultiloquentia/gifts).



London, October 1797. 

 

The comedy that evening was  _ Twelfth Night,  _ and as Mrs. Jordan was still confined to childbed, Elizabeth had the mixed joy and terror of playing Viola’s part for a full run for the first time. 

Joy for it was a splendid role, with a set of equally splendid costumes (particularly the coat, breeches, boots, and sword she wore when Viola pretended to be a young pageboy, Cesario).

But… terror predominated. It was one of Mrs. Jordan’s signature roles, and Mrs. Jordan was particularly beloved by the rougher characters who bought tickets for the pit. Elizabeth could not help recalling the old adage, passed hand to hand,  _ quasi cursores, _ from actress to actress, that London audiences did not like it when an actress deviated from the customary interpretation of a part. Woe betide the actress who did not play Lady Teazle without the pointed exactness with which Mrs. Abington had debuted the role. She would be booed offstage.

“Odd considering their love of new spectacle,” Elizabeth had opined to her father, at breakfast that morning. “But I suppose the human character contains all manner of contradictions.”

Elizabeth’s pre-stage jitters were made considerably worse by the absence of Jane. Jane had left that morning with Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst for a women-only salon concert at Strawberry Hill, organized by the sculptress Anne Damer. Not that Jane had any reason to be backstage at Drury Lane that evening; Jane had no role in  _ Twelfth Night.  _ Indeed, Jane had not been given the part of Olivia when Miss Farren left  _ because  _ of how often Elizabeth would have to take on the role of Viola. Mrs. Jordan had a child by the Duke of Clarence every year since taking up with him, and his attentions to Mrs. Jordan showed no sign of ebbing. (Mr. Bennet once dryly remarked that even if he never went to sea, Sailor Billy forded the river Jordan with remarkable frequency.)  

Elizabeth was rather glad that Jane had not been given the part, for there was a certain awkwardness in having her own sister pretend to be in love with her. Mrs. Crouch had taken on the role with a stateliness and elegance that made her a pleasure to have in any scene. Against her even Mr. Collins was tolerable as Malvolio. But still— Elizabeth badly wanted the reassurance of Jane’s steady regard, and the bulwark of Jane’s reputation as a beloved and talented fixture on the Drury Lane Stage. 

When Elizabeth walked onstage, feigning having been shipwrecked, she felt entirely alone. She made the mistake of looking out at the audience as the sailors and captain entered. Even with all the candles lit, the audience in the pit was too massed together; the audience in the boxes too outshone by their clothing and jewels; and the audience in the upper gallery too distant for Elizabeth to read their expressions. She fancied, based on this lack of evidence, every person watching her was ready to boo her for the criminal offence of Not Being Mrs. Jordan.

Her spirits rose suddenly in rebellion. Perhaps she was not Mrs. Jordan, but she _ was _ Mrs. Jordan’s understudy and had learned from her style.  _ Elizabeth Bennet  _ could be as arch, as lively, as unaffected— and the part of Viola was hers for the evening. There were no other Violas on stage. For this brief span of time, the role was Elizabeth’s to inhabit and she would bring it so fully to life that the audience could have no choice but to like it. 

Elizabeth turned from the audience to face the other actors onstage. “What country, friends, is this?” She placed an unintentional emphasis on “friends,” an inadvertent plea for allies in this fight against expectation.

The actor playing the captain understood, and said, almost as if welcoming her, “This is Illyria, lady.” 

When she asked, in reply, “What should I do in Illyria?” Elizabeth meant it, truly, before realizing the answer and sinking fully into the part.

To say that she forgot her audience would be untrue, for part of being an actress meant playing to the audience— charming them into liking her choices, and exaggerating a bit of business when they laughed— but she at least forgot that they might dislike her. How could anyone dislike Viola, after all? Elizabeth certainly loved Viola. She would exaggerate all that was best about her, until the audience loved her just as much. 

At the ludicrous fight between Viola—then disguised in breeches and jacket as the page Cesario—and Sir Andrew, she fancied she won over her audience. It took skill to fence well onstage, but even more to fence comically badly, without being hurt. And in this Elizabeth was a true proficient. Growing up with three younger sisters, two of whom were incredibly rowdy, had honed her ability to avoid a flailing opponent, and growing up with Mr. Bennet for a father had honed her comedic timing to a knife’s point. She fancied that even Mrs. Jordan could not make such lady-like avoidance of a flailing sword half as funny. 

When Elizabeth came out to bow in her breeches, the audience did not boo her at all. They cheered her, and applauded her. Elizabeth kissed her hand to each level of the audience—the tradesmen in the pit, the gentry and aristocrats in the boxes, the laborerers and servants in the upper tier—conscious of having charmed them all into liking her, into liking her performance. She felt giddy with relief and triumph as they all roared out their pleasure when she bowed a second and then a third time. 

She wanted only Jane for her happiness to be complete. When she tripped gaily offstage and back to the greenroom, Elizabeth immediately sought out her mother. “Where is Jane? Surely the salon is over?”

Mrs. Bennet passed Elizabeth a damp handkerchief. “She is with Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst still.” 

Elizabeth wiped off the sweat-streaked powder and rouge on her face, feeling absurdly disappointed. “I suppose they invited her to dinner?” Jane was as gracious offstage as any of the characters she played onstage. If Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst offered, she would accept. 

Mrs. Bennet shook her head. “She took ill while at Strawberry Hill. She rose with a headache, you know, and would not take the draught I made her.”

No Bennet girl took Mrs. Bennet’s draughts if she could help it. It was impossible to judge their efficacy, for they tasted so foul no one ever managed to drink the prescribed dose.  

“Jane insisted it would pass but Miss Bingley sent a note that Jane looked wretchedly ill in the carriage, and it came upon her most suddenly.”

Elizabeth doubted this. It was more likely that Jane had awoken miserable but, aware of her duties and commitments, had concealed her illness until the performance had ended. 

“Is Jane at home?”

“At home?” asked Mrs. Bennet, quite startled. “Lord bless me child, of course not. Miss Bingley gave her a room and she has been resting there ever since she took ill. I went and saw her during the enter’acte. It is a very good thing she has no part in  _ Twelfth Night _ , and is on salary.” A terrible thought occurred to Mrs. Bennet. “She may have to cry out of Mrs. Siddons’s benefit night at the end of the week.” A benefit night was one where an actor or actress picked their favorite play (or the play which featured their most popular role), and took home all the ticket sales, after the house costs were paid. If asked, an actor or actress always agreed to act in a benefit night production. Otherwise no one would act in the production  _ you  _ picked when  _ your  _ benefit night came around.

“Is she really so ill?” Elizabeth asked.

“No, but it is better not to risk moving her,” declared Mrs. Bennet. “Jane would never forgive herself for failing to assist in a benefit night.”

Elizabeth thrust aside the dirty handkerchief. “I must go see her.”

“Go out when half the audience is pouring out of the theatre!” cried Mrs. Bennet. “No, no. I have had half-a-dozen complaints from the box keepers that no one is staying for the afterpiece. Sheridan ought to have taken your father’s farce. Everyone would have stayed for that, and your father would not be forced to see his work performed at  _ Saddler’s Wells _ . But instead he had some nonsense about hot air ballooning and everyone is going home. You will be waiting for a hackney or a chair for hours!” 

“I shall walk, then,” said Elizabeth, and before Mrs. Bennet could protest at the danger of or the implications of a woman walking alone at night, added, “in my Cesario costume. And Mr. Bingley and his sisters live in Mayfair. No footpads or press gangs will haunt any street from here to Berkeley Square.” 

“You had much better wait until the morning,” said Mrs. Bennet querrelously.

“I will be back home before Kitty and Lydia are finished in the afterpiece,” said Elizabeth. Her two youngest sisters were apprentices still, and earned their keep by being in crowd scenes. Middle child Mary, the only Bennet girl who did not act, assisted by copying out parts for the actors, and attempting to write very didactic dramas in the style of Hannah More. (Only the former made any money.)  

“At least get a couple of link boys to light the way,” groused Mrs. Bennet. “Why you insist on dashing about in such a wild way… Mrs. Jordan is a bad influence on you Miss Lizzy. You need only take on her character  _ onstage _ , not off.”

Elizabeth very safely walked the fifteen minutes to Mayfair. The butler at Mr. Bingley’s house, being accustomed to the eclectic set of artists and literati whom Bingley cheerfully gathered about himself, did not so much as flutter an eyelid when Elizabeth showed up in male attire and asked after her sister.

“Miss Bennet is upstairs resting,” said the butler emotionlessly. “If you will come into the library, ma’am, I will ask if Miss Bingley is at liberty to receive you.” 

The library had mostly music books in it— not unsurprising given that Mr. Bingley was a composer, a virtuoso violinist, and the concertmaster for the Prince of Wales’s personal orchestra. Elizabeth also spotted the usual collected set of Shakespeare, and some scattered half-open volumes that suggested Mr. Bingley had been in there earlier, researching for the opera he was writing on the Spanish Armada _.  _ Elizabeth felt at ease with the untidiness, the evidence of a mind at work, engaged in occupations similar to— though perhaps more respected than— her own. 

She picked up a volume at random, only to lower it as the door opened to reveal Mr. Darcy, in a state of some deshabille. It was evident he had been working with Mr. Bingley on the libretto for the opera, for his fingers were inkstained, and there was likewise a smear across his cheek; and his hair, which he usually wore unpowered and pulled neatly into a queue, in a Whig protest against Pitt’s tax on hair powder, was falling out of its ribbon. Elizabeth had often quipped how odd that the Whigs should be wigless, to which her father usually replied, “Better wigless than witless.” 

Elizabeth bowed, but Darcy did not return the gesture. Indeed, it was not clear to Elizabeth if he noticed her at all, for he had his gaze fixed on a shelf at the other end of the room, and was muttering something to himself. She could make out the rhythm of iambic pentameter—a rhythm she knew as well as her own heartbeat, by this point in her career— though not the individual words.

Elizabeth decided to be noble and not to assume he was deliberately giving her the cut direct. “Good evening Mr. Darcy.”

He turned to face her in some surprise. “Miss Bennet?” 

She inclined her head and set down her book. “Mr. Darcy.” 

“I did not recognize you in so… picturesque a costume.”

“It was  _ Twelfth Night  _ at Drury Lane this evening,” said Elizabeth. Mr. Darcy continued to stare at her. Elizabeth wondered if perhaps he was drunk. 

She decided to make matters clearer. “As Mrs. Jordan is indisposed, I, her understudy, had the honor of playing Viola.” 

Mr. Darcy continued to stare.

“I know you are a tragedien, sir, but surely you must have  _ some  _ knowledge of Shakespeare’s comedies. Viola is shipwrecked in Ilyria, she disguises herself as a man, and takes the name Cesario… no? Perhaps we shall leave off Renaissance literature for now. I am come to inquire after my sister, not to quiz you on the mainstays of the English stage.” 

“I know  _ Twelfth Night _ ,” said Darcy, in a such a way that Elizabeth instantly believed that Mr. Darcy had never read the play before. “Did you come as soon as the curtain fell?”

“As you see.”

Darcy, clearly at the limits of his understanding, continued on to the bookshelf and took down a heavy tome of some dry history or other. He hid his face in its pages. “I daresay Miss Bingley will be in presently; she can assure you as to the state of your sister’s health. Miss Bennet was not well enough to dine with us this evening, but I was told it was merely a bad cold, and rest would be all that was necessary to restore her to good health.”

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth.

The silence that then fell made Elizabeth nervous. It reminded her too much of dead air onstage, when someone had forgot a line, or missed a cue. 

Fortunately Miss Bingley, though late, did not entirely miss her entrance. “Good evening, sir,” she said, a little confused. “That is— Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”

Elizabeth held out the tails of her coat in a curtsey. “Good evening to you Miss Bingley. My mother said my sister was taken ill, on the way back from Strawberry Hill.”

“Yes,” said Miss Bingley, with a slight moue of distaste. “Mrs. Bennet did come by earlier and believed your sister was a great deal too ill to be moved.”

Elizabeth was relatively sure this meant Mrs. Bennet did not want a sick person in a house with five people who would not be paid if they did not appear at Drury Lane every evening it was open (only Jane was established enough to be on a salary of five pounds a week), and a sixth who was now two weeks late with his promised farce for Saddlers’ Wells. There was a logic to it. 

“Where are your lodgings again?”

“Great Queen Street,” said Elizabeth, calmly. An unfashionable address, not at all within the sacred diamond of Mayfair, where both the Bingleys and Mr. Darcy lived, but a respectable one. True, the house’s chief attraction was it’s proximity to Drury Lane Theatre, so that none of the Bennet family had to go very far to their place of employment, particularly in the evenings, but it was hardly a slum. 

Miss Bingley let out a purposefully musical titter, one that ranged up and down the scale like a glissando and showcased no natural amusement. “So far away as that! I don’t wonder at your mother’s being worried at your sister’s being moved. We are happy to give her a room this evening.”

Elizabeth called upon years of training to make her thanks seem sincerely given. 

Miss Bingley accepted it uncritically, but Elizabeth felt Mr. Darcy’s eyes on her again. Perhaps he could tell she was acting? His family did own several of the important regional theatres, after all— indeed, Mr. Collins could not stop talking about the theatre owned by Darcy’s aunt, Mrs. de Bourgh, where Mr. Collins had been on a salary of six pounds a week, before Mr. Kemble had given him a chance at Drury Lane. (A choice Mr. Kemble now sorely regretted. If Mr. Collins had not been such a good Malvolio, he would have been sent back to Kent already.) 

Elizabeth rushed on to ask, “Miss Bingley— I wonder, if it will not inconvenience you unduly, may I go up and see my sister?”

This request was granted and Elizabeth went up. Poor Jane looked truly miserable, her hair drooping out of its pouf and pins as she huddled in only shift and shawl under a pile of blankets in bed. Jane was very glad to see Elizabeth, and immediately apologized for missing Elizabeth’s debut as Viola.

“Hardly my debut, dear Jane,” said Elizabeth, taking a comb out of her pocket. “Let me braid your hair for you.”

“Your debut for a full run, rather than your taking on the part because Mr. Sheridan had not paid Mrs. Jordan in two weeks, and she refused to go on,” protested Jane, in a hoarse voice. “I like how your dresser arranged your hair, Lizzy, in those loose curls.” 

“The effect is more charming with the hat, but that is with the butler.” She settled behind Jane and began taking out pins and neatly pulling the comb through Jane’s hair. Jane still powdered, though in Elizabeth’s opinion, Jane ought not to; her natural color was so rich and pretty. “And you know I played Viola when I was jauntering about the provinces in the summers, trying to gain experience where a London audience could not see me. This does remind me of when we toured with uncle Gardiner’s troupe oh… four… five years ago? Before your debut at Drury Lane, when we had to act as dressers for each other.”

Jane’s voice gave out as they were reminiscing; at which point Elizabeth switched to her report of the performance. She had finished this, and had Jane tucked back into bed, with her hair neatly braided, when a maid came up. 

“If you please, Miss Elizabeth, the family is having supper, and wish to know if you would like to join them.”

Elizabeth wished she could say no, but it would be rude not to go down, and she made her living by charming people into liking her. To fail with the assembled company could be disastrous. Darcy, dreary and irritating fellow that he was, was widely hailed as England’s best contemporary dramatist, and had followed in Sheridan’s footsteps by writing his way into a seat in the House of Commons. Elizabeth had made it a point of pride to have never read and to never read his plays after a newspaper reported, “We hear that noted dramatist Mr. D— has no very good opinion about the state of English comedy with the departure of Miss F—. When seen at Drury Lane’s  _ As You Like It _ , he said he liked it not at all. There was little wit and less beauty in those comediennes who had replaced our beloved Queen of Comedy. And when asked about the the famed B— sisters, he conceded, “The eldest Miss B—- makes a very pretty Cecilia, I grant you, but she smiles too much. Her sister is a tolerable Rosalind, but E— B— is hardly the equal of E— F—.””

The Bingleys were likewise influential in the artistic world of London. Old Mr. Bingley had been carried from the West Indies to London, as a child, when his musical gifts had recommended him to the naval brother of his master. These same gifts endeared him to the eccentric Duchess of Queensbury, who made him her page and then sent him to be trained as a musician. Old Mr. Bingley had befriended Garrick in the course of his studies, and from that connection secured patrons enough to establish all his children creditably within the same sphere, and even to tour them across England and parts of Europe as young musical prodigies. All three of his children had then made the difficult leap from public to private performance. They performed only for courts and aristocratic salons. 

And Elizabeth knew her credit with them was low as it was. Mrs. Bennet still took on comic parts like the Nurse in  _ Romeo and Juliet _ and Mrs. Malaprop in  _ The Rivals  _ on Drury Lane (and had the pit roaring with laughter every time, Elizabeth thought defensively). In her youth she’d taken on soubrettes and giggling maidservants… as well as a number of keepers. Though Mrs. Bennet seemed to have thought her marriage to Mr. Bennet had sponged away any traces of her time as a courtesan, most did not share this opinion. Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst certainly didn’t. Those two ladies had made no secret of the fact that they also thought Elizabeth vulgar, since she took on breeches roles. No woman of virtue attired herself in the garb of the opposite sex, no matter the customs of the theatre or the strength of her reputation offstage. 

As Elizabeth came down, she heard Miss Bingley once again revisiting this theme by exclaiming, “To come here, still in costume, quite alone at eight-o-clock at night! Such pride and impertinence. What can she mean by it?”

“I am sure I do not know,” said Mrs. Hurst.

“I think,” replied Miss Bingley, “it shows that Miss Elizabeth is an actress in just in the same mold as Mrs. Jordan. She cannot be as talented as a Miss Farren onstage, so she must be outrageous off of it, to draw tradesmen and servants into the cheap seats.”

“I think it shows an affection for her sister that is very pleasing,” said Mr. Bingley. “She came as soon as the curtain fell and she was finished with her work.”

“It would have been only a quarter of an hour’s wait if she had changed into proper garments,” protested Miss Bingley.

“I would do the same for you, if I heard you were ill,” said Mr. Bingley.

“But you are a man,” said Mrs. Hurst, exasperated. “Miss Bennet is not. Though one can hardly call her a lady.”

Elizabeth released her white-knuckled grip on the bannister, willing herself to breathe slowly, and reciting Lady Macbeth’s most dire monologue in her head. Was this any worse than what she daily read about herself in the papers? She and Jane managed to escape censure by being so constantly together. Neither of them had ever had a keeper nor wished to acquire one. Mrs. Jordan was paid the lordly sum of 23 pounds a week, not including the three or four hundred pounds she regularly took in on her benefit nights. It had ever been Elizabeth’s ambition to achieve such financial security and such independence herself. She had seen too many of her colleagues fall from the stage into private keeping and from then into penury, and more still at the mercy of men without their best interests at heart. Though her parents’ marriage was not a happy one, it was one of the most functional she had ever seen. 

With that as her exemplar of domestic felicity, Elizabeth often thought it was no wonder she preferred the idealized declarations of love professed to her onstage, than any of the lures men had thrown out to her since she was fifteen. 

‘I shall show you, Miss Bingley,’ Elizabeth thought, pasting on a smile. ‘I am a better actress than you will ever realize.’

She entered the parlor all smiles and graciousness, thanking all the Bingley siblings for their keeping Jane overnight. Bingley seemed sincerely worried over Jane when asking after her health, and just as sincere in his relief that it was little more than a bad cold. 

He initially offered to let Elizabeth stay with them as well, which Miss Bingley quickly vetoed, and Elizabeth decided to be gracious by asking if instead she might call upon them early tomorrow, and see how Jane fared.

With that, everyone was able to partake of cold meats, cheeses, rolls, and sweetmeats with relative equanimity. At least, Mr. Bingley’s high spirits were restored. He cheerfully informed them all that his and Mr. Darcy’s opera was progressing apace. They had completed their first draft of an aria of Queen Elizabeth’s famous speech before the battle, where she declared that though she might have the body of a woman, she had the heart and stomach of not just any man, but a king. Mrs. Hurst, a coloratura soprano, had graciously sung it for them, and declared that though the ending needed work, it had the makings of a very fine showpiece. Her husband, a man of fashion rather than artistic talent, snored contently at this pronouncement, from a couch in the corner of the parlor.

“How did you choose the Spanish Armada as your subject, Mr. Bingley?” Elizabeth asked, not wishing to address Miss Bingley or Mrs. Hurst. 

“Oh everyone is always after me to set  _ Othello _ or  _ Oroonoko  _ to music,” said Mr. Bingley, gesturing at his dark complexion, to explain just why all the world asked after those specific plays, “but I really am not the sort of composer who can manage a tragedy. Playing always puts me in the liveliest of spirits. Even if I take up my violin quite heartbroken I am perfectly cheerful as soon as I have finished tuning it. And since we are at war with Spain, Darcy suggested the battle of Tilbury would find great favor with any English audience.”

The ensuing debate over what gained favor with an English audience, and particularly what they’d accept in terms of a female part lasted the rest of the evening and the next three visits of Elizabeth’s. Mr. Bingley kept the conversation up because he was genuinely curious, though his dislike of quarrels meant he would occasionally cut off the debate when Elizabeth found it most interesting. Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst parried with Elizabeth for they had a vested interest in how a woman ought to present herself to the world, and saw Elizabeth as an emblem of all they most wished to avoid being.

Why Mr. Darcy should revive the debate every time he saw Elizabeth was a more baffling question. He had made it clear all her usual means of charming had not worked on him, and, indeed, that he did not find her a skilled practitioner in her art. It was a mystery why he should care what she thought about women’s parts, and how actresses got pigeonholed in certain roles (for now Elizabeth had been assigned breeches roles, she would always play them), and how she knew to work upon the feelings of an audience. Elizabeth fancied Darcy was searching for some reason to further dislike her, or to justify his bad opinion of her, and took pleasure in doing her utmost to prove him wrong. 

On Elizabeth’s fourth visit with the Bingley’s, Mrs. Bennet came along as well. It was Mrs. Siddons’s benefit night, and Jane would go onstage if Mrs. Bennet had to wheel her on in a Bath chair. Probably out of mischief, Darcy asked Elizabeth how common it was at Drury Lane for comedic actresses, like Jane, to take part in tragedies.

“Only yesterday you were decrying how the theatre demands an actor or an actress to always play to type,” said Elizabeth. “I thought you might be glad my sister has a set role in the Scottish play.”

“Jane is playing Lady Macduff tonight,” said Mrs. Bennet, “and that cannot be held to be anything but a very affecting part, over a tragic of a comic role. Jane plays it with a sweetness that makes the unjustness of her death all the more unjust. It is Jane’s will as well as my own that she go on this evening,” Mrs. Bennet hastened to add, as Mr. Darcy looked skeptical and Mr. Bingley looked concerned. “She is an artist, sirs, the likes of which one only sees in Mrs. Siddons. If Jane has promised to perform, she will perform. The show must go on.”

This was— in Drury Lane at least— so weighty an argument that all must fall silent before it. But Darcy did not agree.

He asked, “But must it? Surely there are other actresses, tragediennes, to take on a role lasting only one scene.”

“None who play it like Jane,” said Mrs. Bennet, quite riled. 

“Mr. Darcy speaks of understudies,” Elizabeth protested. 

“Jane’s understudy is not half so beloved,” sniffed Mrs. Bennet. “Why Jane first went on as Lady Macduff when she was fifteen, in my brother Gardiner’s troupe, and received some very pretty verses from a titled gentleman—“

“And there ended his affection,” Elizabeth exclaimed, before Mrs. Bennet could go on to say that the titled gentleman had thereafter asked Jane to be his mistress at five hundred pounds per annum. “There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!”

“I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love,” said Darcy.

“Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.”

Mr. Darcy only smiled at that.

Fortunately for Elizabeth’s nerves, Jane came down then, and they were off to Drury Lane. Elizabeth was in the farcical afterpiece, and went to bed in a very good humor.

This did not last out the week—for Elizabeth then received what Mrs. Bennet declared were very pretty verses too.

“What?” Elizabeth asked, groping blindly for the coffee pot. She had played Viola again the night previous. It was her longest run in so featured and so demanding a part and it was now a struggle to rise by the time all the rest of the family was finishing their breakfasts. Indeed, Jane and Kitty had already gone to Drury Lane for a rehearsal. 

“There is a sonnet dedicated to you in this,” said Mr. Bennet, holding up  _ The Morning Chronicle _ .

“Only one,” said Mrs. Bennet with a sigh. “Jane had dozens every time she took to the stage, when she was your age. But that is a very good  _ start _ . We shall not complain. More may follow.”

Elizabeth’s pride was hurt by this, and she said, tired and vexed, “I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me, whether or not he does it in verse.”

Lydia snorted. “Only because no man would.”

“Lydia,” said Mr. Bennet warningly. 

“I will not make Jane’s mistake,” Lydia continued on, heedlessly. “If a titled peer offers  _ me  _ five hundred pounds per annum, I shall take it. You shan’t see me toiling away on a stage! You shall see  _ me  _ waving out of my own carriage. I shall,” she added, magnanimously, “give my sisters rides to Drury Lane. If I am awake then, for I daresay I will attend so many balls and parties I will sleep the day away!”

“I would not ride in your carriage,” Mary replied. “I refuse to partake in such ill-gotten gains.”

“No one would hire you to play any character at all onstage,” replied Lydia crossly. 

“I am a playwright, not a player,” was Mary’s lofty retort. “The didactic value of the theatre, in elevating the character of man—“

Lydia blew a raspberry. 

“Have you anything to say about our youngest daughter’s chosen path?” Mr. Bennet asked his wife.

“Hold out for six hundred,” said Mrs. Bennet.

“Well that’s Lydia’s career settled,” Mr. Bennet said dryly. “Lizzy, here is a poem dedicated to a Miss E dash B dash, who appears to be in some way associated with  _ Twelfth Night _ . I think this is for you.”

Elizabeth downed her coffee with ill grace before taking the paper.

It was not a bad poem— in fact, it infuriated Elizabeth for being quite so good. 

The writer was infatuated with Elizabeth, but she was deaf to his words; he likened his sonnet to a bird song heard ringing through the empty countryside. There could be no reply to his loving lament. The cooing of Aphrodite’s doves was but pretty music to the fair dedicatee. But there was a pleasure in the song itself. Even if he was unheard and he dwelt alone, in the solitary splendor of creation, the poet could rejoice that his song would be heard by others, and it might bring them pleasure and consolation. There was a wistful riff on the line, ‘come and kiss me sweet and twenty,’ from  _ Twelfth Night _ , which Elizabeth could not see as anything but an outright and identifying allusion to her— for she was performing as Viola, and was twenty years old. 

When some of the dressers and stagehands pestered Elizabeth that evening to read it aloud, and she gave in, Elizabeth’s annoyance only grew. The verses, with their strong rhythm and lovely sonorites, made it a pleasure to recite. 

The next morning, Elizabeth found she could not concentrate on memorizing her lines for Hippolita in Ciber’s  _ She Would and She Would Not _ , which would eventually replace  _ Twelfth Night _ . It was a part very much suited to Elizabeth and her talents, and second only to Viola in terms of parts that Elizabeth had most looked forward to taking on while Mrs. Jordan was confined to childbed. And yet she could take no pleasure in it.

“I do not know why you are quite so stupid today,” said Mrs. Bennet, frowning over the top of the script. Then, since she had no proof of it at all, exclaimed, “I knew it! I knew you would take ill if you insisted on playing nursemaid to Jane last week! You have fallen ill.”

“I am not ill, Mama,” said Elizabeth. “Merely— oh that sonnet has me out of temper. I shall walk about St. James’s Park for half-an-hour and be myself again, I assure you. Then I will be quite ready to work.” 

“You shall not do so looking like  _ that _ ,” said Mrs. Bennet.

Though Elizabeth knew there was a good chance that whatever she wore out of doors would be reported in the papers— particularly since every cartoonist in London had been so pleasantly scandalized she had jauntered over to Mr. Bingley’s in her Viola-as-Cesario costume— the process of choosing clothes that would please both her and her mother wore out what little patience she had left.  At length Elizabeth was bundled into a frothy gown of white muslin, over which she wore a stylish blue redingote with large buttons, a small brimmed hat, trimmed in blue, and one of the inconveniently huge fur muffs that no lady of quality would be seen without. Elizabeth set a brisk pace, calling out that she was running late to any who tipped their hat to her, and dwelt wrathfully on the sonnet. She disliked the allusion even more this morning, for last night’s performance had reminded her that the line was in a song of the Fool’s called, “O mistress mine.”

Drury Lane was not Tattersalls. She was not there to be auctioned off like a horse to whatever man had an interest in her. Acting was becoming what Garrick had elevated it to be: an art form, as high and as respectable as music or painting. 

Did no man see that she was as dedicated to the pursuit of her art, as a Mozart to his music, a Reynolds to his painting? Elizabeth knew herself to be one of the better comedic actresses in the company, and had confidence (and vanity) enough to believe someday her name might be pronounced with the same respect of a Mrs. Abington, a Miss Farren, or a Mrs. Siddons. 

Did no man understand that she did hear the arguments of whatever young idiot wished to make her his mistress that week— she just did not care  _ for _ said arguments? Why give the compliment of rational opposition, or even  _ acknowledgement,  _ to such insulting demands?

The anonymous poet said there could be no reply to his anguished cry of love—well! He would find himself quite wrong. 

Instead of learning her lines when she got back home, Elizabeth furiously penned a response in which she carried the bird metaphor to the absurdist possible conclusion. She declared the sonnet dedicated to her in the newspaper a mating display, the sort which the very stupid diamond dove Jane kept in her Drury Lane dressing room made to his reflection. The sonnet revealed more self-love than love for her. If Elizabeth did not reply before, it was for fear of laughing. The only English bird who touched her heart was the upstart crow, that swan of Avon, whose quills created the only words of love she could hear with pleasure. 

Mr. Bennet laughed when he read it, which Elizabeth took to mean that if she published it under her own name, she would keep her reputation for both wit and propriety. A spirited declaration of love to Shakespeare, and to her profession, would only establish her reputation as a respectable and serious actress, not detract from it. 

Though Mr. Bennet was lackadaisical with anything resembling a deadline, he found Elizabeth’s poem diverting enough to bring it to the same newspaper that had published the sonnet, and it was published the next day. Elizabeth was tremendously pleased, and took to the stage with greater confidence than before.

Mr. Darcy’s being in one of the boxes on the stage somewhat cut up her peace when she first tumbled onstage in her men’s attire. She could not help but recall, with a flash of miserable self-consciousness, the very awkward visit in her costume to Mr. Bingley’s house. ‘Hang Mr. Darcy!’ she thought rebelliously. No matter how fine a dramatist he was, he could never create a character half so delightful to inhabit as Viola. Indeed, she soon forgot Mr. Darcy in the pleasure of Shakespeare’s language, and the cleverness of her stage business. Elizabeth could have continued on in this happy manner for the rest of the run, only within the week, there was yet another poem to ‘Miss E— B—.’

Her poetic admirer replied with a riff on Orsino’s famous line, ‘If music be the food of love, play on.’ The poet-songbird was not making love to his own reflection. By glutting himself on poetry, he would make himself ill of love and fall out of it with her, and all her particular charms, and she could continue on in service of the muse of comedy. There then followed many an allusion to the particularities of Elizabeth’s interpretation of Viola, including the way in her fight scene, she held and wielded her foil as a society lady her fan. She was both flattered and disconcerted that the gentleman— or perhaps a lady, but Elizabeth fancied a lady would be less fascinated by the sound of their own poetic voice— had paid such close attention to her performance. 

After being teased about it at practice that day, Elizabeth found herself deeply annoyed that not only did the poet fail to allow her the last word, he also singled out  _ Viola, _ out of her steadily growing repertoire. 

“Conceal me what I am,” Viola demanded, in her first scene— a line that had always sounded in Elizabeth’s ear with particular resonance. It occured to Elizabeth that though she dearly loved the part of Viola, it was not one that felt as if she was sharing anything of herself more than her talent and love for the character. Then, too, Elizabeth could not get over the sense of Viola being  _ Mrs. Jordan’s  _ role, not properly her own, the way Beatrice was.

When the Countess of Derby had died and it had become clear Miss Farren would soon be leaving them to marry her long-time admirer the Earl of Derby, Elizabeth had heartily campaigned for the role of Beatrice. Jane was by now fixed in the role of Hero, and, as Elizabeth had argued to everyone from Mr. Sheridan (the owner of Drury Lane) to the assistant box keepers, would it not bring freshness and authenticity to the relationship between Hero and Beatrice to have a pair of sisters play them? Mr. Kemble, the manager of the company, had agreed to this, especially as Elizabeth had already played the role in the provinces and had the lines memorized. He had agreed to let Elizabeth understudy the part, and when Miss Farren had to absent herself one evening for a Whig dinner party, Elizabeth had poured her soul into the performance. 

She had never received such applause before, for any role, or been so acclaimed by critics. The company had agreed that the role of Beatrice was hers, and, as Elizabeth had not pushed for any other of Miss Farren’s roles, was not resented for taking it. Whenever Drury Lane staged  _ Much Ado _ , it was with Elizabeth on the playbill. Other actresses understudied  _ her _ .

Each time she took to the stage as Beatrice, she felt the heady exaltation of this being her part, of revealing lines that  _ meant  _ something to her, that had become the important undergirdings to her personality. They were engraved upon the table of her heart. 

If this fellow had talked about her Beatrice, she might have allowed him the last word. But as he hadn’t, she spent her free hours for the next week trying to write a response that balanced wit with honesty, while still keeping to a recognizable rhyme scheme and pattern. 

Elizabeth also riffed on Shakespeare. She would, as Beatrice declared, prefer to hear her dog howling at a crow than to hear a man say he loved her— for her dog had all the virtues that man did not. Loyalty, fidelity, affection, obedience… one could not find a man with half so many good qualities as the average spaniel. Whatever songs the poet-songbird trilled out, she would not believe them.

Relief warred with annoyance when at first it seemed there would be no reply, but instead of finding it in the papers, Elizabeth instead saw the response, a folded note to Miss E— B—, written in a tight, closed hand, tucked into a bouquet tossed onto the stage one evening. 

This so vexed her she hid the note without reading it, and gave the bouquet to her dresser. This lady left before Elizabeth went into the green room, to greet her admirers. Jane was in the new farce, and so Mr. Bingley was backstage, wishing her luck before she went on. He had dragged Mr. Darcy with him.

Before Elizabeth could settle on which direction to turn, Mr. Darcy stepped forward with a smile. “Miss Bennet.”

At least she had changed back into skirts. Elizabeth spread them and curtsied. “Mr. Darcy. What a surprise to see you.” Then fearing she’d been a little too blatant in her dislike, added, “I did not think you enjoyed comedies.” 

“I do, I merely have no facility in penning them.” There fell a slight pause and Darcy said, “I noticed you have begun writing yourself.”

Elizabeth colored self-consciously and tried to distract from this with a laugh. “I suppose you saw that, sir? I felt I could not let such words go unanswered.”

To her surprise, Darcy laughed. “After all our debates, Miss Bennet, I cannot truthfully say I did not expect you to remain silent when you had something to say. Has there been no response from your poet?” 

Elizabeth faked a laugh. “None that I have yet seen. But perhaps that is for the best. We are neither of us Shakespeare.”

“It reminded me more of Marlowe’s ‘Passionate Shepherd’ and Raleigh’s response,” said Darcy. “Though it seems to me, Miss Bennet, that you doubted this poor fellow’s feelings.”

“I do,” Elizabeth replied coolly. “It seems to me he likes Viola, not myself. His feelings will pass once he realizes I am not the character I play onstage. I have been endeavoring to help him in that, by reminding him I am an actress, and have made Shakespeare my constant study. Then, too, I am dedicated to my profession. I am not inclined to any keeper. Had this continued, I think I would have to have gone back to a slightly earlier period and told my admirer to read up on Sir Thomas Wyatt.  _ Noli me tangere _ — touch me not. Not because I am Caesar’s, but because I am….”

“Shakespeare’s,” suggested Darcy.

“No,” said Elizabeth, thoughtfully. “I am no man’s and do not wish to be.” Then she decided upon her declaration of war against the poet and his ilk. “Touch me not, because I am my own.”


End file.
